Electric hair cutting appliances are generally known and include trimmers, clippers and shavers, whether powered by main supplied electricity or batteries. Such devices are generally used to trim body hair, in particular facial and head hair to allow a person to have a well-groomed appearance.
Commonly, conventional devices for cutting hair comprise a main body forming an elongate housing having a front or cutting end (herein referred to as distal end) and an opposing handle end. A cutting assembly is disposed at the distal end. The cutting assembly usually comprises a stationary cutting blade with a stationary cutting edge and a moveable cutting blade with a moveable cutting edge. The moveable cutting blade moves in a reciprocal manner against the stationary cutting blade. The cutting assembly is usually fixed in a single position relative to the housing of the hair clipper, such that the orientation of the cutting assembly is determined by a user orientating the housing or main body of the hair clipping device. The stationary cutting edge and the moveable cutting edge are arranged at the tip portions of the stationary cutting blade and the moveable cutting blade, respectively. These cutting edges usually jut out of the front side of the housing of the hair clipping device, such that the cutting edges are always visible to the user. This makes it easier for the user to see where exactly the hairs are cut, which is specifically advantageous when using the hair clipping device to form and create fine hair contours.
Since there is a great user demand for hair clipping devices that offer the possibility to be used for different hair cut-lengths, many known hair clipping devices make use of separate, differently sized comb attachments. These comb attachments are generally mounted on the distal end of the hair clipping device to position the cutting assembly relative to the skin. In other words, such a comb attachment is used as a guide that moves over the skin and guides hair towards the cutting assembly. Typically, the comb attachment is mounted over the cutting assembly and spaces the cutting blades, in particular their cutting edges (the stationary cutting edge and the moveable cutting edge), apart from the surface of the skin from which the hairs extend. However, always having to replace the comb attachment by a different one when the hair cut-length shall be changed might be cumbersome for the user, as this is not only time-consuming, but the user also has to store a plurality of differently sized comb attachments.
Therefore, a lot of prior art hair clipping devices use only one comb attachment that is adjustable in different positions relative to the housing of the hair clipping device. Users may thus shift the comb attachment between different positions leading to different hair cut-lengths. Usually these moveable comb attachments may be adjusted between hair cut-lengths of 3 mm, 5 mm, 7 mm, 9 mm, usually up to 12 or 15 mm. Most of the prior art hair clipping devices using such adjustable comb attachments provide a mechanical solution for moving the comb attachment relative to the housing of the hair clipping device. Users may thus shift the comb attachment by hand between the different positions.
US 2012/0233866 A1 discloses a hair clipping device with an adjustable comb attachment, wherein the position of the comb attachment may be adjusted by means of an electric motor. This motor may be controlled via a touchscreen that is integrated into the housing of the hair clipping device. The user may thus shift the comb attachment between the different positions by using two buttons on the touchscreen, one button for moving the comb attachment relative to the cutting assembly to increase the hair cut-length and the other button for moving the comb attachment relative to the cutting assembly to decrease the cutting length. This facilitates the handling for the user compared to mechanically adjustable comb attachments. However, users sometimes still have problems to correctly adjust the comb attachment in an electronic way. Shifting from a very short hair cut-length to a very long hair cut-length sometimes also appears to be tedious and could take quite long.
There is thus still room for improvement.